Interminably long, dull and incomprehensible, “John Carter’’ evokes pretty much every sci-fi classic from the past 50 years without having any real personality of its own.

You could say much the same about the title character, as uncharismatically played by the unfortunately named Taylor Kitsch of TV’s “Friday Night Lights.’’ Even in 3-D, he’s barely one-dimensional.

Created a century ago by Edgar Rice Burroughs of “Tarzan” fame for a pulp serial, John Carter is a Civil War veteran who somehow wakes up on Mars. He’s drawn into a romance with a warrior princess and a series of battles between two groups of humanoids nearly impossible to tell apart.

Despite the reported expenditure of as much as $300 million of Disney’s money and the live-action debut of director Andrew Stanton (Pixar’s brilliant “Wall-E”), it’s hard to care about anything going on in this shapeless would-be franchise, which lurches from scene to scene without building any real excitement.

Nor is there even anything all that visually distinctive. David Lynch’s “Dune’’ — one of many films that invites unfavorable comparisons — may be every bit as hard to follow as “John Carter,’’ but at least it didn’t look like dozens of other movies.

This wheezy, humorless epic doesn’t make it easy to sit through the many key sci-fi tropes that Burroughs’ 1912 story (originally called “A Princess of Mars’’) is credited with inventing.

Think of “John Carter’’ as a landlocked “Waterworld’’ (that 1995 fiasco starring Kevin Costner) with its bare-chested hero wandering through the arid landscape of Mars (called Barsoom by the locals) as a captive of the four-armed, lizard-like Tharks (Willem Dafoe voices their leader) à la “Planet of the Apes.’’

After what feels like four hours, things improve briefly with the arrival of the feisty, scantily clad Princess Leia — sorry, Princess Dejah Thoris (Lynn Collins) of Helium. She can handle a sword (the weapon of choice on Barsoom) with aplomb but is defeated by reams of gibberish-laden expository dialogue.

For reasons I couldn’t begin to explain, her father the king (Ciarán Hinds) has promised her hand in marriage to the villainous Sab Than (Dominic West) of the Zodangans.

Even with a writing team that includes Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Michael Chabon, it’s nearly impossible to keep track of who is doing what to whom (and why) in a cluttered narrative that also includes the immortal, shape-shifting Therns (led by Mark Strong) whose motives are even more baffling.

To this muddle, “John Carter’’ adds a pair of confusing framing stories: One involves J.C.’s nephew, the writer Edgar Rice Burroughs (Daryl Sabara), and is set in an 1881 London that’s vaguely reminiscent of the Tarzan adaptation “Greystoke.’’

The other takes place in 1870 Arizona, where an Army officer (Bryan Cranston, in a blond wig) is trying to conscript the widowed J.C. — who’s more interested in a cave full of gold — to fight Indians. Got all that?

The effects are nowhere near as jaw-dropping as you’d expect from a movie this expensive. The white apes who confront Carter in an arena look less fearsome (and real) than those polar bears from the Coke commercials.

And when Carter discovers he can take 100-foot leaps because of Mars’ lower gravity, the effect is more silly than awe-inspiring. Even the digitally enhanced battle sequences are boringly staged compared to those in the “Lord of the Rings’’ trilogy.

This is the sort of movie where characters spend entirely too much time declaiming things like “War is a shameful thing!’’ “Helium is lost!’’ and “We may have been born worlds apart, but I know you, John Carter!’’

Alas, after more than two hours, I didn’t come close to knowing who John Carter is — and I didn’t really care.

His unexciting exploits kept making me wish that I was re-watching “Raiders of the Lost Ark’’ or “Avatar’’ — two other classics ineptly aped by “John Carter.’’ Instead, I was enduring a movie even more soul-sucking than “The Phantom Menace.’’